Air (#52Ancestors, Week 16)

John Robert Graf
ca. 1940

John Robert Graf was my mom’s cousin, 16 years older than she was. He registered for the draft when he was a 19-year-old student. I remember my mom telling me he was a conscientious objector during World War II but that he participated in the war without going into combat. She also said that he had gone missing in the Pacific Ocean.

Although nothing in my research specifically confirmed that he was a conscientious objector, I choose to believe that he was, based on my mom’s comments and the fact that his family was Seventh Day Adventist, sometimes considered a “peace church.” Some research in the Fold3 database has helped me piece together how John Graf served in the war, how he went missing, and how he fits this week’s prompt, “Air.” 

John Robert Graf was a pilot in the 17th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, 4th Photo Reconnaissance Group of the U.S Army Air Force. Reconnaissance pilots were called “Photo Joes,” and after reading about them I have a sincere respect for how John served his country in the second world war. 

Photo from the P-38 National Association and Museum

“Photo Joes” like John were the advance eyes of the fighting men. Their job was to fly over enemy territory and take pictures of the location, activities and movements of the enemy, either before or after a raid. The recon pilots flew alone, with no guns to defend themselves. If they were spotted, they had to rely on speed and elevation to outrun their pursuers; they had no guns to defend themselves. 

This was the life John led in the army. But somewhere along the line he met an army nurse named Maurine. I don’t know much about their life together but I do know John and Maurine got married because I have a picture of them.

Wedding party of John Robert Graf and Maurine Betty Halbe
Place and date unknown

Back to the war and photo reconnaissance. John’s story ends sadly as so many men’s stories did in World War II. On about February 22, 1945 John took off from Molotai Island on a combat photo reconnaissance mission to Tarakan, North Borneo. 

On Feb 23 a bomber on a mission to Tarakan reported seeing sea dye from a life raft along the flight path that John would have taken. An emergency rescue group in the area was notified and planes were sent out, but they could not make the visual sighting because of adverse weather conditions. A month later an official Missing Crew Member Report was filed about John Graf. 

Manilla American Cemetery and Memorial

John’s sacrifice is memorialized at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines. He is listed among the 36,286 names of the missing. So far I haven’t found an obituary for him. But hopefully this memorializes him in a small way. John Robert Graf, thank you for your sacrifice and your service in the air.

Watch a YouTube video that sings the praises of the World War 2 Reconnaissance Pilot. If only John and Maurine’s story could have turned out the way this video did. 

Fire (#52Ancestors, Week 15)

There are two fires in my family history that I know of. I don't have pictures, but one of them did make the newspaper.

I will never forget walking home from school in the fall of my freshman year at Muncie Northside High School. I was at the bottom of our street and noticed a couple of fire trucks up ahead. How exciting, I thought, there's a fire on our street.

As I got closer I realized that the fire was at our house and I was no longer excited. I was horrified. I ran up the street to our house on the corner to find Mom and Mrs. Sears, one of our neighbors. To be honest I don't remember too many details except that I just lost it on Mrs. Sears' shoulder. I was worried about our cat and dog. Turns out that the dog had run away (we did find him) and the cat hid inside.

Mom had come home earlier and opened the garage door. She heard a "Whoosh" and all of a sudden there was a fire in the garage. We figured later that it must have been spontaneous combustion. I don't know how she called the fire department but they did a great job of putting it out before it spread to the rest of our house. Most of the damage was in the garage and attic above it where, unfortunately, we had put some family keepsakes: my mom's childhood doll house, my rocking horse (both of which were made by my Grandpa Falk). The Christmas ornaments were there, too, but luckily not the handmade ones.

We couldn't stay in our house for a few days while the damage was cleaned up and repaired. One of Chris' friend's parents (the Stanleys) loaned us their RV for Mom and Dad to stay in, parked in our driveway. We kids stayed with friends. Thankfully, repairs and cleaning were taken care of and it didn't seem long before life was back to normal.

Princeton Bureau County Tribune,
December 31, 1915

The second fire story in our family is a little more serious.

Theodore Johnson is my great-grandfather. His daughter Edna is my paternal grandmother. Edna was the fourth daughter of Theodore and Anna Johnson. She would have been 15 in 1915, about the same age as I was when we had our fire.

The fire at the Johnson's house happened on Christmas morning. According to what I can make out from the article, (and I remember Grandma telling this story once or twice) the family was ready to go to church early on Christmas morning but someone forgot their hat so Grandma's mom Anna went back to look for it in the closet. In 1915 the house that they lived in didn't have electric or gas power, and it would have been dark, so Anna had to use a kerosene lamp. Whether she left the lamp burning in the closet or something caught fire that she didn't notice is not known. But at 6:45 a.m. while the family was worshiping at church on Christmas morning, a neighbor saw that their house was on fire and called the fire department.

Princeton had a fire department at the time but no dispatching service like we have now. The telephone operator misunderstood where the fire was and 20 minutes were wasted because of the mix up.

The paper reported on the fire:

“When the wagon finally arrived the interior of the house was a mass of flames and it was impossible for the firemen to enter and save the furniture. The house property was covered by insurance amounting to $1,000. No insurance was carried on the furniture….

“The only piece of furniture removed from the house was a piano. This was dropped by the firemen as they were taking it out of the house and was damaged so that it is practically of no use.

“The residence will be repaired at once. During the repairing of the home the Johnson family are living with relatives and friends in the vicinity of their home.”

I can't imagine the tragedy of losing your house on Christmas Day, along with all the presents and food for the celebration. And the loss of the piano! My grandma and her sisters were all very musical, I'm sure they mourned the piano.

Hopefully Anna was able to let go of any burden she might have felt about starting the fire. The blessing was that no lives were lost in the fire. I'm sure that, as the ashes smoldered, the family eventually was able to count their blessings. In a tragedy, we find hope in counting our blessings.

Water (#52Ancestors, Week 14)

Outer Banks, North Carolina

The best water story I have comes from my own family history. For over 30 years our family has traveled to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to stay at the beach for a week. For years, going to Nags Head every summer for the family vacation was our tradition. After a while it became almost sacred. Changes loom now that my mother has passed and COVID-19 threatens our trip this year. But that’s the future. Let me share our family’s history at Nags Head, North Carolina.

It all started in 1986 when Mom decided to find a summer vacation spot at the beach. We lived in Indiana and going to the ocean was an exciting destination. She wrote away to Chambers of Commerce all along the East Coast (no internet research at that time!) and she picked Nags Head, North Carolina. She rented a small house right on the ocean and took her mom, my youngest sister Carla and Carla’s friend. They took two days to drive there. The three-bedroom house had no TV, no telephone, and no air conditioning. There were few restaurants and fewer activities. Mom, Carla, and her friend spent the days reading or sunning on the beach; Grandma stayed on the porch and crocheted.

Two years later the whole family went to Nags Head, Grandma included. We stayed in the same house, which was called “Lucky Us.” Mom and Dad had the master bedroom, I shared with Grandma, Stacy and Carla shared the third bedroom, and Chris slept in the living room. By this time there was a putt-putt golf course and a few more restaurants. We (actually, Mom) cooked some of our meals and some nights we dined out. We spent most of our time on the beach. We enjoyed breakfast on the porch, lazy days on the beach, family bonding sessions at night, and the majesty of the ocean.

After 1988 we went to Nags Head every summer; our seaside vacation was a constant in our changing family. We children were maturing, getting jobs, living on our own, getting married, and having children of our own, but we kept on going to Nags Head. We found larger houses that could accommodate all of us. Mom and Dad added a second trip in the fall, just the two of them. As our families grew and schedules changed, there were some years we couldn’t all make it, but most of us always went. We stayed all up and down the Outer Banks, in Kitty Hawk, Nags Head proper, and south Nags Head. Our most recent trip was way north in Corolla.

Family Dinner 2018

The Rest of the Family Dinner 2018

Over the years we’ve accumulated so many memories it’s hard to know what to include here. I’ll just end with a random list and family members can add on if they want to. I hope these give a flavor of the place on the water that is so important to our family.

Carl's First Nags Head 2001

Claire's First Nags Head 2004

We love to eat out at Owens', Sam and Omie's, and Lone Cedar.

We buy our food at Food Lion, Seamark Foods, Cahoon’s, and the Whalebone Seafood Market. Remember the year we bought out Cahoon’s stock of Nabisco Sugar Wafers!

Mom loved to go shopping at The Farmer’s Daughter, The Christmas Shoppe, and the Manteo bookstore, and we often went with her. The outlet stores were another popular shopping destination.

We visited other sites like the Bodie Island, Cape Hatteras, and Corolla lighthouses, the Wright Brothers National Memorial, and the Elizabethan Gardens. We attended The Lost Colony outdoor drama in Manteo. We took the ferry to Ocracoke Island and took a tour of the wild horses north of Corolla.

We went went to the movies, we went golfing, fishing, and parasailing. We did puzzles. We played cards, Yahtzee, backgammon, frisbee, and bocce ball.

Carl learned to walk there. Chris suffered from his brain tumor there. Mom got lost there once in the early stages of her Alzheimer’s disease.

We often celebrated Bill’s birthday there. Peter chose Nags Head to ask my parents’ permission to marry me. One trip was specially dedicated to celebrate Mom and Dad’s 50th wedding anniversary.

Sometimes I wonder if we love Nags Head because the ocean is "in our blood," so to speak. Our Swedish family comes from Skane, Sweden. This area is close to the ocean, but I don't have any evidence that our ancestors actually went to the ocean. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. But I'm sure that now, after so many years of going to the beach, Nags Head is truly in our family's DNA.

Nags Head sunrise

Nearly Forgotten (#52Ancestors, Week 13)

Nearly Forgotten

Today I'm going to write about my great-grandfather's brother, Andrew Pierson. My great-grandfather was Herman Peterson. There has been discussion in our family about the different last names these brothers had and whether or not their names were changed at Ellis Island. That is addressed at the end of this post. What follows is based on research I have done in Ancestry.com, newspapers and by talking to relatives.

Andrew Pierson seems to be a person who hovered on the outskirts of our family. My dad and his cousins only remember a little bit about their great-uncle: He attended some of the family’s Swedish Christmas Eve celebrations, and toward the end of his life he lived in the “old folks’ home” in Princeton, Illinois. He was forgetful in his later years and maybe had a form of dementia or senility.

Here is what I have found about him in my research. Although his name changes, other things like his birthday and his relationship to his brother do not change.

Andrew Pierson came to the United States under his original Swedish birth name, Anders Hansson. He arrived in New York on March 17, 1900 on the S. S. Campania. He said that he was going to stay with his brother in Princeton, Illinois.

In the 1900 census he was living and working on a farm in Bureau Township, Bureau County, Illinois. He is listed as Andrew Peterson, born September 1877, immigration date 1900.

In 1917 Andrew Pierson became a United States citizen.

In 1918 he filled out a World War I draft card. His name was Andrew Pierson, he was living and working on a farm in Bureau County. He gave his birth date as September 22, 1877, and he listed Herman Peterson as his closest relative.

 

In 1923 he applied for a passport and traveled to Sweden, maybe visited his parents and family there. On the passport his gave his name as Andrew Pierson, confirmed his birth date September 22, 1877, that he was born in Espo, Sweden, lived in Princeton and became a citizen in 1917. His passport application also included a photograph of him, the only one I've found so far.

In 1930 he lived in Princeton and worked as a gardener at the Country Club.
In 1940, he lived in Princeton and worked at a nursery. His brother had the same occupation.

The newspapers say that Andrew attended Pierson family reunions, the family of his father’s brother Carl who came to Princeton in 1893. Andrew also attended First Lutheran Church in Princeton and Lutheran Brotherhood meetings there.

He was in the hospital a couple of times in the 1960s. He died at Prairie View Nursing Home in 1972, several months before his brother Herman.

These bare facts are not a lot to go on. They paint a fuzzy picture of the man. I see someone who left his homeland probably looking for a better life than he had in Sweden. He went to Princeton because family was there. He worked on farms and other outdoor jobs because that is what he knew in Sweden. He went to church. He never married. He didn’t make an impression on the younger generation of his family. I would guess he stayed on the sidelines of family gatherings, but he did go. He didn’t stand out in a crowd. He worked and earned a living for himself.

Andrew, if this is all I ever know about you, it will be enough to tell me that you were a member of my family and you were loved by God. If I find out more about you I will certainly post it here.


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Ellis Island Name Changes

For a long time all I knew about Andrew was the family story: He and Herman (my great-grandfather) came to America at the same time. When they got to Ellis Island someone there gave Andrew the last name of Pierson and they gave Herman the last name of Peterson. I've also heard that Herman changed his name to Peterson because he thought Pierson was too common. I don't believe either one of these is true. The New York Public Library and the Smithsonian Magazine have written articles that debunk the myth of names being changed at Ellis Island. I tend to agree with them.

Andrew Pierson was born Anders Hansson on September 22, 1877. He was born in Sweden and therefore followed the naming conventions of that country. Sons took their last name from their father; his father was Hans, so his last name was Hansson. His father’s father was Per, so Andrew’s father’s name was Hans Persson. It is my guess that Andrew and Herman took their father’s name, thereby following American naming conventions. Herman came to the United States in 1899 and Andrew came in 1900. I don’t know why they ended up with different last names but I don’t think it happened at Ellis Island.